Sanders makes the correct points in his opening paragraphs of the NYT Op-Ed intro to today's legislation being introduced. In particular, he needs to keep shouting that single-payer could be CHEAPER than what we have now (or had.)

He should not ever let up on this, as it's the single-most effective tool against opposition. Forget all the "shoulds" (we should provide for all, we should care equally) --- ALL of that is 100% noise to any conservative. Total deal-breaker, even on their twisted view of "moral" grounds. Drop it. Stop singing to the choir.

Yesterday, there's a Hillary podcasted interview, where she complained that Sanders only campaigning muddied the waters regarding healthcare by not offering specifics. She won't be impressed by his Op-Ed piece today, either.

Pelosi and Schumer echo that, and prefer a possible short-term gain in 2018 (or 2020), so this idea remains moribund for years. How to do it? Doesn’t really matter at this point, if it’s not a shared goal.

They face the same problem every Democrat seems to suffer from: Once a Republican corners them on an issue, they don’t actually fight back and SELL the idea on any visceral level. See also the example from the link below re: Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.)

I thought 2016 would have have taught them that “let’s be practical (and so, conform)” loses the race, these days. After all, it's why moderate Republicans are leaving Congress, no?

The established leaders of the Democratic party are NOT wrong about how to regain power. Trouble is, it's no longer enough to win in the long term. Conformity without any promise of progress is extremely unappealing. About 8 years ago, at least, we had HOPE.

The "last" thing I want is for the nation to become more divisive, more polarized, or to die on every hill being fought. The dam has broken, nonetheless. When Sanders warns to not be on the wrong side of history he's speaking also to Democrats.

I laugh at the term "Single Payer". What everyone means is national health service. A massive sea change to fix, once and for all, our hideous lash-up of a healthcare 'system'.

BUT...
I think it's an amazing idea. I don't even care if i will pay lots more in taxes, because I pay a HIDEOUS amount for healthcare. You could double my income taxes and cut my healthcare costs to zero, and I would dance in the streets.

QuoteFilliam H. Muffman
Any time Clinton butts into the news cycle about the past, it is another distraction from going forward with issues like this.

Sanders is a Flim Flam man who ultimately cost us the election. He's done nothing of any real consequence in the entirety of his life.

Oh, my bad, raising $220 million and losing by 4 million votes did have that consequence.

No, Vision, your bad is the fact that you didn't mention that Clinton spent almost 900 million dollars so she could lose to Trump..Seriously, what does that say about your candidate?

C'mon Vision, the guy is very active and has been active and effective, while sticking to his Socialist / indeopendant staus.. He has major respect on both sides of the aisle as a hard worker//he votes with integrity and what you're doing is repeating a bunch of meme garbage..

You're a Hillary fanboy, I don't expect you to embrace the guy.. but the fact of the matter is we need voices like his to check both sides..Cause Hilalry is way deep in the pockets of everyone and is a also a flim flam artist and a total wind sock with a high school drive to become to class president...she offers nothing in the way real change from what's been happening to our process..same old crap driven by corporate money and media...and if you think different you're really hypNOtized.

Among other stuff, including active and energetic involvement the behind the scenes- writing..mechanical aspects of the process..and more

Co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus and chaired the group for its first 8 years.
Both the NAACP and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given Sanders 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. Earns a D- from the NRA.
1984: Mayor Sanders established the Burlington Community Land Trust, the first municipal housing land-trust in the country for affordable housing. The project becomes a model emulated throughout the world. It later wins an award from Jack Kemp-led HUD.
1991: one of a handful in Congress to vote against authorizing US military force in Iraq. “I have a real fear that the region is not going to be more peaceful or more stable after the war,” he said at the time.
1992: Congress passes Sanders’ first signed piece of legislation to create the National Program of Cancer Registries. A Reader’s Digest article calls the law “the cancer weapon America needs most.” All 50 states now run registries to help cancer researchers gain important insights.
November 1993: Sanders votes against the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement. Returning from a tour of factories in Mexico, Sanders says: “If NAFTA passes, corporate profits will soar because it will be even easier than now for American companies to flee to Mexico and hire workers there for starvation wages.”
July 1996: Sanders is one of only 67 (out of 435, 15%) votes against the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to same-sex couples legally married. Sanders urged the Supreme Court to throw out the law, which it did in a landmark 2013 ruling – some 17 years later.
July 1999: Standing up against the major pharmaceutical companies, Sanders becomes the first member of Congress to personally take seniors across the border to Canada to buy lower-cost prescription drugs. The congressman continues his bus trips to Canada with a group of breast cancer patients the following April. These brave women are able to purchase their medications in Canada for almost one-tenth the price charged in the States.
August 1999: An overflow crowd of Vermonters packs a St. Michael’s College town hall meeting hosted by Sanders to protest an IBM plan to cut older workers’ pensions by as much as 50 percent. CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and The New York Times cover the event. After IBM enacts the plan, Sanders works to reverse the cuts, passing a pair of amendments to prohibit the federal government from acting to overturn a federal district court decision that ruled that IBM’s plan violated pension age discrimination laws. Thanks to Sanders’ efforts, IBM agreed to a $320 million legal settlement with some 130,000 IBM workers and retirees.
November 1999: About 10 years before the 2008 Wall Street crash spins the world economy into a massive recession, Sanders votes “no” on a bill to undo decades of financial regulations enacted after the Great Depression. “This legislation,” he predicts at the time, “will lead to fewer banks and financial service providers, increased charges and fees for individual consumers and small businesses, diminished credit for rural America and taxpayer exposure to potential losses should a financial conglomerate fail. It will lead to more mega-mergers, a small number of corporations dominating the financial service industry and further concentration of power in our country.” The House passed the bill 362-57 over Sanders’ objection.
October 2001: Sanders votes against the USA Patriot Act. “All of us want to protect the American people from terrorist attacks, but in a way that does not undermine basic freedoms,” Sanders says at the time. He subsequently votes against reauthorizing the law in 2006 and 2011.
October 2002: Sanders votes against the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq. He warns at the time that an invasion could “result in anti-Americanism, instability and more terrorism.” Hillary Clinton votes in favor of it.
November 2006: Sanders defeats Vermont’s richest man, Rich Tarrant, to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Sanders, running as an Independent, is endorsed by the Vermont Democratic Party and supported by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
December 2007: Sanders’ authored energy efficiency and conservation grant program passes into law. He later secures $3.2 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for the grant program.
September 2008: Thanks to Sanders’ efforts, funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding doubles, helping millions of low-income Americans heat their homes in winter.
February 2009: Sanders works with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley to pass an amendment to an economic recovery bill preventing Wall Street banks that take taxpayer bailouts from replacing laid-off U.S. workers with exploited and poorly-paid foreign workers.
December 2009: Sanders passes language in the Affordable Care Act to allow states to apply for waivers to implement pilot health care systems by 2017. The legislation allows states to adopt more comprehensive systems to cover more people at lower costs.
March 2010: President Barack Obama signs into law the Affordable Care Act with a major Sanders provision to expand federally qualified community health centers. Sanders secures $12.5 billion in funding for the program which now serves more than 25 million Americans. Another $1.5 billion from a Sanders provision went to the National Health Service Corps for scholarships and loan repayment for doctors and nurses who practice in under-served communities.
July 2010: Sanders works with Republican Congressman Ron Paul in the House to pass a measure as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill to audit the Federal Reserve, revealing how the independent agency gave $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans to big banks and businesses after the 2008 economic collapse.
March 2013: Sanders, now chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and backed by seniors, women, veterans, labor unions and disabled Americans, leads a successful effort to stop a “chained-CPI” proposal supported by Congressional Republicans and the Administration to cut Social Security and disabled veterans’ benefits.
April 2013: Sanders introduces legislation to break up major Wall Street banks so large that the collapse of one could send the overall economy into a downward spiral.
August 2014: A bipartisan $16.5 billion veterans bill written by Sen. Sanders, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Miller is signed into law by President Barack Obama. The measure includes $5 billion for the VA to hire more doctors and health professionals to meet growing demand for care.
January 2015: Sanders takes over as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, using the platform to fight for his economic agenda for the American middle class.
January 2015: Sanders votes against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would allow multinational corporation TransCanada to transport dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
March 2015: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to expand benefits and strengthen the retirement program for generations to come. The Social Security Expansion Act was filed on the same day Sanders and other senators received the petitions signed by 2 million Americans, gathered by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
September 2015: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) today introduced bills to ban private prisons, reinstate the federal parole system and eliminate quotas for the number of immigrants held in detention.
January 2016: Sanders Places Hold on FDA Nominee Dr. Robert Califf because of his close ties to the pharmaceutical industry and lack of commitment to lowering drug prices. There is no reason to believe that he would make the FDA work for ordinary Americans, rather than just the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies.

The fact of the matter is that the health care payment industry in America employs millions and millions of people, and makes a bunch of CEO types and stockholders rich. This may sound like an argument to get rid of the status quo, and I agree with you, but that constituency isn't going to become unemployed (or give up their associated riches) quietly.

If we could get Medicare onto the Obamacare exchanges, that would be a critical step, and one that I think would eventually (and less painfully) get us to Medicare for all. I'd bet that even at full-cost-of-coverage (with the same income-based subsidies as other Obamacare policies) that Medicare would at least be cost-competitive if not lower cost than current offerings. It could even be initially limited to exchanges where there are no private insurers participating. There would still be tremendous pressure in the form of BS trying to tell us how Medicare is inferior to private coverage, and some of this would be believed. But it would eventually win a significant number of Obamacare customers.

I'd be willing to bet that eventually, private insurers would slowly fade toward certain niches or luxury consumers, much like brick-and-mortar retailers are doing today. Of course, this doesn't address the suppliers (ie docs, hospitals, etc) and something would have to eventually be done about that too.

But the idea that you're going to be able to implement a full Canadian-style system from where we are now, with millions of voices screaming against you, I honestly think is just a delusion. A delusion fated to political defeat, along with it's proponents.

pdq... do recall that Medicare allows for managed care plans run by insurance companies. In fact, the health insurance industry OWNS the legislature and the governmental bureaucracy, and will continue to work towards their betterment. NOT that of the citizens.

Sadly, bureaucracies of that sort only collapse in the face of revolution. Either physical or in technology. The 'phone company' bureaucracy evolved in the face of advances. The healthcare bureaucracy will only evolve as technology evolves.

Just like how Big Oil / Petrochemical Lobbies are not going to make alternative energy easy unless they are also making BIG BANK from it.

There is too much at stake, and those in power, with wealth, will not let it go without a major legal fight - which they can afford. It's been shown many times that the one with the bigger bank account can wear down the ones fighting them with less in their coffers. Sadly.

We're not going to see some Biblical David & Goliath scenario play out here.

Expecting things to change overnight is where the disappointment/shutdown happens before the discussion even begins.

Sanders breathed new life into something when he didn't back down re:banks and re:healthcare. Just because he can't make it happen soon doesn't mean "never." Pelosi and Schumer won't even publicaly entertain it, and for that reason, they live in the past. With Clinton.

Why don't any of these people work out a scenario ... with at least a mockup example ... where it could work, instead of just saying "we should do it"? That indictment includes Sanders/Warren/Booker et al.

I'll go back to Obama's successful messaging: Hope, and Yes We Can

Today, it's "oh, no we can't, so just give it a rest for now". Momentum is here, as much as ever. If they would have successfully killed the ACA, not so much.

But guess what? Conservatives decided more government healthcare, not less, is desired. Who would have guessed that would happen, just a few months ago?

Folks forget that the industry behind the insurance is the real problem..pricing of goods and sevices.

the free market is supposed to create competitive pricing..insurance sits on top of that bloated layer..

Nobody is willing to start going after this issue..it's a political impossibility because the stacks of cash involved and circulating through our legislator's veins..they go to outer space like beanstalks..

I'm conservative, and I'm for national health care. I think most people get healthcare one way or another, so it really is mostly a question of cost. Nobody wants people to die needlessly, but I also don't think anyone wants the health care industry to continue to cost pretty much what they want to cost, either. NPR had a segment about single payer in Vermont that was interesting. It sounded like a better case has to be made, and that's going to have to include arguments based on cost (sorry, but I think dems are worried about money too).

From WebMD:
"Medigap is extra health insurance that you buy from a private company to pay health care costs not covered by Original Medicare, such as co-payments, deductibles, and health care if you travel outside the U.S."

Note that one of the beefs about Obamacare is the rather steep deductibles on plans with otherwise affordable premiums. Those deductibles can pinch a budget, moreso on fixed income.

From WebMD:
"Medigap is extra health insurance that you buy from a private company to pay health care costs not covered by Original Medicare, such as co-payments, deductibles, and health care if you travel outside the U.S."

Note that one of the beefs about Obamacare is the rather steep deductibles on plans with otherwise affordable premiums. Those deductibles can pinch a budget, moreso on fixed income.

Every hurricane season, new Floridians learn about "reinsurance," additional policies sold when main policies won't provide coverage.

Comey... a "determining factor" in her loss, her own mistakes weren't enough.

You really don't believe that? I think Nate Silver/538 made a pretty convincing statistical case that it was a determining factor (not the only, but one of the major factors) in a close election.

You can look it up on 538 if you want, but there was a panel discussion (about Clinton's book and the things she "blames" for her loss) that they just put up. It's pretty good. On a 1 (small) to 5 (large) effect scale...

Quotemicah: Speaking of … next: “The unprecedented intervention in our election by the director of the FBI.”...

natesilver: 4.5

perry: 5

natesilver: It was a big deal. And because it was a discrete event — it happened at one time — it’s relatively easy to measure.

There’s still a range of impacts, from maybe 1 percentage point of the national popular vote on the low end to 3 or 4 points on the high end. But you really have to twist yourself into a pretzel to conclude that the impact wasn’t large enough to cost Clinton the election.

Comey... a "determining factor" in her loss, her own mistakes weren't enough.

You really don't believe that? I think Nate Silver/538 made a pretty convincing statistical case that it was a determining factor (not the only, but one of the major factors) in a close election.

You can look it up on 538 if you want, but there was a panel discussion (about Clinton's book and the things she "blames" for her loss) that they just put up. It's pretty good. On a 1 (small) to 5 (large) effect scale...

Quotemicah: Speaking of … next: “The unprecedented intervention in our election by the director of the FBI.”...

natesilver: 4.5

perry: 5

natesilver: It was a big deal. And because it was a discrete event — it happened at one time — it’s relatively easy to measure.

There’s still a range of impacts, from maybe 1 percentage point of the national popular vote on the low end to 3 or 4 points on the high end. But you really have to twist yourself into a pretzel to conclude that the impact wasn’t large enough to cost Clinton the election.

I have addressed this previously.

QuoteFilliam H. MuffmanThe latest 538 pile of poo that stuck to the wall on what single item lost Clinton the election
"More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent. That generally matches the findings of the voter data released in some Southern states showing that young black voters were especially likely to stay home in this election. Younger black voters were far more likely to support Bernie Sanders in the primary, suggesting that there simply was not the enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy as there was for Obama’s in 2012."

Sadly, the SurveyMonkey poll that 538 is cherry picking stats from only has about half the number of respondents they need to get a good statistical results for all the groups. I remember hearing middle age African-American men switched to Drumpf in about the same percentage as middle age white women, but it seems that almost nobody who says things like this ever backs it up with the actual poll numbers that normal people can view.

It's great fun to lay blame for this-or-that demographic "failing their duty" to do the right thing. But all it does is highlight that *everyone* as a collective is "to blame."

(Speaking of which, if for convenience's sake you want to put a label on the "worst offenders" of voting impropriety, that can't ever be minorities of any stripe, so long as a there exists a majority of some kind. When the day comes that our population is evenly distributed across race and ethnicity, then we can point to which group went awry. Until then, the answer, coldly, numerically, continues to stare us in the face.)

Seriously, what'll it take to say, "yep, also true, and now what do you want to do?"

Comey... a "determining factor" in her loss, her own mistakes weren't enough.

You really don't believe that? I think Nate Silver/538 made a pretty convincing statistical case that it was a determining factor (not the only, but one of the major factors) in a close election.

You can look it up on 538 if you want, but there was a panel discussion (about Clinton's book and the things she "blames" for her loss) that they just put up. It's pretty good. On a 1 (small) to 5 (large) effect scale...

Quotemicah: Speaking of … next: “The unprecedented intervention in our election by the director of the FBI.”...

natesilver: 4.5

perry: 5

natesilver: It was a big deal. And because it was a discrete event — it happened at one time — it’s relatively easy to measure.

There’s still a range of impacts, from maybe 1 percentage point of the national popular vote on the low end to 3 or 4 points on the high end. But you really have to twist yourself into a pretzel to conclude that the impact wasn’t large enough to cost Clinton the election.

I have addressed this previously.

QuoteFilliam H. MuffmanThe latest 538 pile of poo that stuck to the wall on what single item lost Clinton the election
"More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent. That generally matches the findings of the voter data released in some Southern states showing that young black voters were especially likely to stay home in this election. Younger black voters were far more likely to support Bernie Sanders in the primary, suggesting that there simply was not the enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy as there was for Obama’s in 2012."

Sadly, the SurveyMonkey poll that 538 is cherry picking stats from only has about half the number of respondents they need to get a good statistical results for all the groups. I remember hearing middle age African-American men switched to Drumpf in about the same percentage as middle age white women, but it seems that almost nobody who says things like this ever backs it up with the actual poll numbers that normal people can view.

When I see something is based on survey data, I automatically give it pretty low influence on my beliefs. What do you do when someone wants you to participate in a survey? I just don't, and I suspect that is the norm. So who does complete surveys? Certainly not a sample that represents the population.

Phasing in such a plan at a reasonable rate of speed is a great strategy. Both ends of life contain the biggest expenditure of health dollars. Start there and get a handle on what it takes to make it work - which really just means add kids since Medicare already covers the other end. Then slowly add from each end until everyone is covered.

The devil will be in the details, but it'd just be nice for once if those with enough money that they'll never need health insurance would simply butt out and let it play out - for better or worse. Nothing could be much worse than what's going on right now. You are either lucky to have employment and healthcare coverage as a result, or you're unemployed and uninsured. It's the speed route to an underclass of citizens.